Moon mountain

This film tells about the adventures of a young Bengali in Africa in 1909-1910. The 20-year-old Shankar Roy Chowdhury, who recently completed his studies at First Arts College and is about to work in a jute mill, does not see the prospect of this work.

Shankar craves adventure, wild lands, forests and animals. He wants to follow in the footsteps of famous explorers such as Livingston, Park Mungo, Marco Polo and all the others he read and idolized.

By luck, Shankar takes a job as a boss at a deserted station in the Ugandan Railway with the help of a villager who works there. Then, without hesitation, the protagonist of the film goes to Africa. One evening, Shankar decides to pursue the cannibal lion, and, fortunately, he manages to reach his cabin by locking the door to the castle. The next day, he asks the station manager to provide him with a Springfield bolt-action rifle and carbolic acid. This happens the day before he encounters another danger in Africa: meeting a black mamba with a poisonous snake. But Shankar succeeds in distracting her with his torch. The next day, the hero of the film takes a rifle and acid from another person - the Indian Tirumal Appa, who serves the British army.

They quickly find rapport, and Tirumal often visits it. Once he became a victim of the same cannibal lion. This annoys Shankar, and he decides to put an end to this danger. He poses like a bait, pouring blood to himself and scatters pieces of meat. He tempts the lion from his cave and, in the end, strikes him.

He rescues and looks after Portuguese explorer and gold digger Diego Alvarez. Meeting him deeply affects him. Alavares tells him of his exploits and adventures as he and his companion Jim Carter fought in the deep jungle and mountains of Richtersveld to find the largest diamond mine. However, they were ripped off by the legendary Bunyip, the mythical monster that guards the mines and kills Carter.

Shankar gives his work and accompanies Alvarez when he decides to hit the road again and find the mines again. They face countless difficulties. The first is a raging volcano, which forces them to stop their expedition. One night they were attacked by a monster Bunyip. In the end, they get lost in the forests where Alvarez is killed by a monster, saving the life of Shankar. The devastated Shankar mourns the death of Alvarez. He will bury him with all the rites and set off towards the lunar mountain.

Shankar strives to achieve civilization. He accidentally discovers diamond mines. He enters the cave and is mistaken. With great difficulty he goes out, marking his path with “pebbles” and taking back with him in memory, not knowing that each of them is an uncut diamond. He finds the remains of the Italian explorer Attilio Gatti and finds out that the previously discovered cave was a diamond mine. Gatti, as Shankar learns from a note, had uncut diamonds in his boots. The note said that one who reads the note can take diamonds while he buries his skeleton with Christian rites. Shankar does this and holds old diamonds.

Passing through the jungle, he makes contact with the Bunyip Cave. Filled with revenge, he devises a plan to get rid of it. Shankar collects sticks from the jungle and sharpens the tips in the spears. He takes care of the entrance with a pointed tree and waits for Bunyip. Bunyip appears and, seeing his prey, jumps on him from a height. Shankar leaves, and Bunyip pierces the forest and dies.

Shankar tries to leave, following the compass. He is lost in the deserts of Kalahari and almost dies of thirst. Fortunately, he was rescued by a team of researchers and taken to a hospital in Salisbury , Rhodesia . When he recovers, he sells four of his diamonds and receives a lot of money. He sends one diamond to his parents with a note to sell it and help the villagers with his money. He then sells his only diamond and buys a steamer to continue his research.

The film ends with saying that one day he will return to this cave with a large team and continue the legacy of Alvarez, Carter and Gatti.

• Dev - Shankar Roy Chowdhary, the protagonist
• Gerard Rudolph - Diego Alvarez, colleague Shankar, researcher
• Martin Sieve Otto - Jim Carter, Gold Digger
• Nabil Khan - Tirumal Appa
• Paul Ditchfield - Jackbus Marius
• Andrew Stoke - Attilio Gatti, Italian Researcher
• Laboni Sarkar - mother of Shankar
• Tamal Roy Chowdhary - Shankar's father
• David James - Albuquerque
• Peter Moruacgomo - Vogue of the Zulu Tribe
• Matthew Monica - Zulu King
• Rafik Jibhai - Patel
• Gendagu Kit - Prasad Das
• Luthuli Dlamini - Dan Mabiru
• Ramambila Muladelo - head of the Masai tribe

Director Kamaleshwar Mukherjee mentioned the Moonlit adventure novel as a project of his dreams. But he even compared the project to a “double-edged sword”, as he realized the problems, looking for a place in South Africa for a month. When Shree Venkatesh Films agreed to produce the film, they wanted a local star in the title role. According to rumors, the company wanted a well-known actor to play the main character of the adventurer Shankar. In the beginning, the names Virgo and Parambrata Chatterjee claimed. However, later Kamaleshwar Mukherjee said that from the very beginning there should be Dev in the minds of the director (Shree Venkatesh Films). As a result, they chose Deva for the main role. They needed an athletic body to get used to the role of Shankar, because, as the book mentions, Shankar was a boxer, but also engaged in horse riding and swimming. Dev studied riding, and he is good at action scenes. Therefore, finally, he was chosen to be cast as Shankar. Dev also agreed to do this when he was asked. But he was asked to lose weight, because in the second part of the film, Shankar fights with lions, walks through the jungle and mountains and almost starves. Regarding the character, Dev said: “Shankar, the main character, was an athlete and a boxer, he never breaks into any challenges or dangers. Whether it’s a fight with an African lion or a duel on a rock, this is also without an understudy ” ^[1] .

Most of the cast of the film is from South Africa. It took a long time to decide who would play the role of Diego Alvarez, a researcher from Portugal ^[2] , and eventually chose Gerard Rudolph.

At the time of the production of the film, the budget was 10 crore, this film was the most expensive in the history of cinema in Bengali in India ^[3] .

The film was shot in 45 days in South Africa, this film was the first Indian film ^[4] , which was shot entirely in South Africa (before that, only songs for some films and some scenes including Gagini, Confrontation and the Feast of Love were shot in South Africa) Before filming, the director had a party on March 31, 2013 in Calcutta .

Six African lions were used in this film, although many scenes are associated with risks, the composition was very sensitive to this particular scene. The stalk sequence was shot on an animal farm for three days. During this scene, the director and cameraman remained in an open cage with three sides closed. The distance between the Dev and the lions was measured by the lion examiner. Pieces of meat were used to tempt them. The maiden should run away when the director said “Motor,” and six lions chased him. Then he had to enter the cage while running, and the opening of the cage was immediately closed. According to the director, the lions are very lazy and do not even get up for four days after eating. Used lions did not receive food for three days ^[4] .

They also shot a scene with a real black mamba snake. At the pre-production stage, the director asked locals who told how the black mamba bit at least one of the staff in 80% of the shooting cases. The most dangerous fact was that the poison of black mamba cannot be taken out. Thus, shooting this film has a life-threatening sequence with a poisonous snake. Mukherjee added that the biggest risk in this sequence would be operator Sumik Khaldar, who confidently said that he would do his job positively, since he had already decided to do it. Later it turned out that to prevent risk the glass sheet above the snake and the camera so that if the snake attacks, the sheet will be dropped ^[5] .

In this film, only the song of the same name is performed by Arjit Singh. This film is one of the few films in which only one song sounds.

In 2017, the continuation of “Expedition to the Amazon” was released, in the plot of which Shankar goes to look for Eldarado. The film repeated the box office success of the first film and became the highest-grossing film in the history of Bengal cinema ^{[6] [7]} .

• Official movie website